Pale Ink

by Henriette Mertz

[1953]

This is another attempt to investigate early Chinese trans-Pacific
contacts, written mid-20th century by a globe-trotting patent attorney,
Henriette Mertz.
Like Charles Leland's Fusang, written
three-quarters of a century before, Mertz depends heavily on
ancient Chinese geographical treatises to support her thesis that
the Chinese explored the western United States hundreds, maybe thousands
of years before Europeans.
The strongest part of the book is her attempt to explain the available
Chinese historical descriptions, even the most fanciful parts,
in terms of specific locations, animals, and cultures, for the most part
plausibly.
On the downside, she misidentifies parts of the Hindu sacred texts
as Buddhist, and indulges in the amateur etymology game, with
predictable results.
But these factual lapses seem to be peripheral to the book.

Mertz self-published this in 1953, and followed it up with a second edition
in 1972, which corrected many of the endemic typos
in the first edition.
The book was reissued in paperback by Ballentine
in 1975 as Gods from the Far East: How The Chinese
Discovered America (see cover),
apparently in an effort to cash in on the Van Daniken craze.
However, Pale Ink is a much better effort than Van Daniken,
as Mertz is not obsessed with explaining every
Native American technological advance as a borrowing from unknown visitors.